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We are on the road again. This week we are at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in Minneapolis (November 8-9) and we are excited to see the best in tech for embedded systems.

We’re at the show to discuss embedded design strategies and best practices and to showcase the latest in HMI user interface (UI) development, including the innovative Storyboard Suite platform that lets designers and developers work side-by-side to create amazing user experiences on a wide range of platforms.

Experience multi-market demos on a number of embedded platforms

Pop by booth 218 to see how beautifully Storyboard Suite applications scale across a range of hardware. Whether you’re in the medical, home automation, or consumer/white goods industry, we’ve brought an application of interest. Come interact with a medical demo on the Microchip SAMA5D2 that includes blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen, and temperature monitoring, as well as ECG display. Read more about the making of this demo on the Crank blog. We also have multi-market demos on an NXP i.MX 6QuadPlus and an STM32F7.

In addition to these applications that we’ve created in-house, we have a really cool customer application developed by Metrohm to show off. The Metrohm Instant Raman Analyzers (Mira) is a robust and reliable portable spectrometer for identifying and verifying chemicals and compounds that have a Raman signature. Metrohm used Storyboard Suite to create an intuitive user interface for the application, taking advantage of the internationalization capabilities in Storyboard to ensure fast and easy translation of UI elements.

See Storyboard Suite in action

Want to see us build a UI while you wait? Nik, our awesome field applications ninja, will walk you through the entire UI creation process, from Adobe Photoshop to deploying and debugging on a real target.

Drop us an email to set up a time to chat and see Storyboard Suite in action. We hope to see you at the show!

Earlier this year we introduced Storyboard Suite 5.0, which gave UI designers more control than ever over the aesthetic and user experience of embedded application projects. The release included a lot of new functionality and features for both designers and engineers, especially in Storyboard Designer.

We’ve recently made enhancements and updates to Storyboard with our latest release, Storyboard Suite 5.1. Don’t worry, these updates won’t trip you up much from a functionality perspective. We haven’t moved around the elements in the UI or introduced anything to the workflow that will require you to invest too much time to get up to speed. We’ve tweaked some things behind the scenes to make UI development work a little smoother and faster. More importantly, we’ve extended the reach of embedded application development by introducing support for new platforms and technologies, making it easier to deliver Storyboard applications across markets and hardware.

Storyboard Designer 5.1 updates and enhancements

Here’s what’s new in Storyboard Designer:

Eclipse – Storyboard Designer is now based on the Eclipse Framework NEON 4.6.

x64 – Storyboard Designer has been switched from a 32-bit application to 64-bit on all hosted platforms.

Cloning – When cloning an object, we now check to see if a control with the new name already exists, so that you don’t have to.

Keyboard Shortcuts to group and ungroup – We’ ve introduced the concept of grouping and un-grouping through a new action bound to Control/Command + G and Control/Command + SHIFT + G.

SCP – The SCP command execution now has the ability to write output to the console.

Lua Debugger – Storyboard Designer now queries the Lua debug port number in use and passes it into the runtime.

Increased platform support

With each release, we continue to increase the reach of Storyboard Suite across platforms, making it easier for our customers to work with a wide range of target hardware. Here’s what’s new in Storyboard 5.1:

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” That’s good because I am currently drowning in photos and videos from Embedded World 2017. With over 30,000 attendees at the show, we had the opportunity to talk to people with a wide variety of skill sets and job titles. We brought a lot of hardware to Germany again this year which is always a great conversation starter. People were thrilled to see the breadth of platform support and to have the opportunity to interact with Storyboard UI demos on actual targets.

Check out these photos of demos from our booth (Hall 4/4-270) and demos that we spied in some partner booths.

Our demos were also featured in other booths throughout the conference, including the NXP booth. Check out this distributed eCockpit on the i.MX 8, designed in Storyboard Suite.

In case you hadn’t heard, we recently released Storyboard Suite 5.0, so download a 30-day free evaluation and take it for a test drive. To try some of the demos showcased in the booth at Embedded World, download our easy-to-use demo images.

Join us at Embedded World 2017 in Nuremberg, Germany, March 14-16, to experience the latest and greatest in innovative embedded technology. It’s always an exciting show and we will be there again this year with a booth filled with embedded application UI demos built in Storyboard Suite across a number of platforms. Our passionate UI design professionals will be on hand to showcase the latest features and capabilities in Storyboard Suite, our development framework for building beautiful UIs for embedded systems. If you are at the show, stop by Hall 4/4-270 to say hello and check out demo applications we’ve designed. While there, ask us to show you what’s new in Storyboard Suite for 2D and 3D artists and embedded systems developers.

Interact with Storyboard GUI demos on Embedded Hardware

Hardware. We are bringing so much hardware.
We know that embedded teams want to be able to interact with real demos instead of watching edited videos and listening to us boast about features. Our booth will be brimming with multi-market Storyboard demos on a number of platforms, including:

Our UI demos this year cover a wide range of markets, including automotive, home automation, white goods, medical, and kiosk solutions. All demos have been designed and developed in Storyboard Suite, using the latest features from our upcoming 5.0 release.

If you want to get together with us at Embedded World, please contact us to set up a meeting. Alternatively, just drop by our booth and chat with us. We are friendly Canadians and we’d be happy to talk with you about embedded UI design and maybe hockey and cold winters.

As always, we provide a full-featured 30-day evaluation for you to try out Storyboard Suite first hand.

Crank Software will be well-represented at NXP FTF Technology Forum 2016 next week in Austin, Texas, May 16-19. We will be running a hands-on lab again this year, as well as showcasing demo GUIs and Storyboard Suite features and capabilities at the exhibition. If you are going to the show, here’s what you can expect to see.

Exhibition Hall – GUI Design Demos

Visit the Crank Software booths (151 & 154) to check out a wide range of application GUIs designed and developed with Storyboard Suite. We will also be demoing the latest enhancements and features in Storyboard Suite 4.2.

You’ll find innovative Storyboard Suite demos in a number of partner booths at the exhibition as well, including:

Crank Software & NXP booths will be showing Storyboard Suite GUI demos that span automotive, white goods, and lifestyle applications on a variety of NXP iMX family processors. Not to be missed is the impressive Movie Theatre Kiosk, an interactive demo built with Storyboard Suite, running on the high-performance NXP i.MX 6QuadPlus on Linux with OpenGL ES rendering.

Hands-on Learning Opportunity – Storyboard Suite Lab Session

If you’d rather learn by doing rather than watching, we will be teaching a hands-on lab again this year, so make sure you rearrange your busy schedule at the show to attend our session. You’ll get your hands dirty in the 2 hour classroom session, so bring your appetite for learning and try your best to stump the Crank instructor.

Hands-on Lab – The Evolution of Embedded GUI Design: From Photoshop to Crank Storyboard Suite to i.MX Series Hardware in Minutes (FTF-DES-N2034)

When: Tuesday, 4:45 PMWhere: Griffin Hall 5 – Level 2What: In this session, users will: import design artwork directly into Storyboard Suite; add interactive functionality and rich animations; test in the simulator to quickly refine and update the design; and deploy a functioning application prototype directly to an i.MX platform. After completing this workshop, users will be able to import artwork directly from Photoshop into Storyboard Suite, develop a rich application GUI, and deploy to hardware.

We will be tweeting from the show, so be sure to follow @cranksoftware for updates.
The NXP FTF hastag this year is #NXPFTF.

If you haven’t taken Storyboard Suite for a test drive yet, download a 30-day free evaluation and start designing today.